Interpret it whatever way you guys want to, I play AH and this is where my fun is had.
Do I care *I* wasn't picked? No... my 56K can't handle the download, and my last "beta" (alpha?) test was the last incarnation of the dreaded Confirmed Kill. That soured me on the whole experience. I was just a little disappointed when I read the threads by the people who had been accepted, I'd rather see someone else with more experience do it.
Am I being too harsh? Maybe, if it was 1993. Unfortunately we HAVE seen this happen time and again, that being that games get run straight into the ground because of shoddy beta testing. Do you want me to name MORE games than the above? I can... It's not just the flight/combat sim genre.
So, Pongo, your assessment of why I started the thread (read the first post again... sour grapes? Don't think so) is completely off track. It was after I went to the Blue Byte BBS to read threads by those who had been selected that I got a bad feeling.
It's possible I'm wrong, I've only seen 8 years of computer games cycle in and out... The most recent beta test I've actually read about and experienced the end result was a complete disaster - made by Wayward, published by MicroProse/Hasbro.. need I say more?
Pongo, really your post was way off.. I can go more into this. It wasn't the wording, it was the words used. I've conversed with spanish people in broken spanish/english and they have done it in broken english/spanish. Understood each other fine, the only difference was they wouldn't use words like "wheel" instead of "tire". See what I mean? Contest is like wheel, "beta testing phase" is like tire. Two completely different things, and I found it amusing in the way it was presented to me. Careful.. do you know how many Americans (I know you are Canadian... but you are attached to America by land) a year go to foreign countries with absolutely no knowledge of how to speak the language? They are equipped with just a xxxx-english dictionary (xxx would be the country's language) and make so many grammatical errors it IS FUNNY to the country they are visiting.
It isn't that I'm not a beta tester, Pongo, it's that I have the impression from the one's posting that have been selected that it will become dumbed down.
Anyways, fine so you all think I'm sour about not being selected.. I don't have a UBB account over there and I check the screen shot area every 2 to 6 months. Boy, I must be hard pressed for this game and give two toejams about it...
I bought B17-2, I feel it's MY duty to blow some sunshine up everybody's bellybutton about IL-2 in case it goes the same route. You never know, you might actually thank me.
-SW